Apple OS 4.0 press event (meta) liveblog

At 10am in Cupertino, 6pm BST or 5pm GMT, Apple will give the world a 'sneak peek' at its forthcoming OS 4.0 update. What this software revision will entail is still unclear, though sites have been wishlisting and propagating rumours since the invitations went out earlier this week.

Among the projected features of the update are multi-tasking, the iAd mobile advertising network, and an improved API that gives developers the ability to make more advanced games.

On Pocket Gamer's wishlist was iBooks, allowing you access to the written repository than the iPad now enjoys; a search widget, so that you can search for things with having to scroll all the way over to the left home screen; and wallpapers, so that your app icons aren't hovering over an endless black void. All doable.

But will they be done?

Check back here at 6pm GMT to follow the press event as it happens. We don't have anybody there this time, so instead we'll be following the liveblogs of Engadget, Gizmodo, MobileCrunch, and posting updates like this...

19:05 - No details on how much it'll cost, but if it's anything like 3.0 it'll be free for iPhone and £5.99 for iPhone touch.

Oh, and OS 4.0 is coming to iPad a bit later, in the autumn.

19:02 - That's all the poles. OS 4.0 will be available in the summer for iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3G at its full capacity. It'll also be available on iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G, but not with all the features - no multitasking, for example. 19:00 - Toy Story game buyable within an app, along with a neat trick that switches out to a map to show you where the film is playing. 18:58 - Engadget describes the demonstration - apparently involved Toy Story - as like an app within an app, with embedded video and toys to play with. 18:56 - Apple wants iAds to actually be good. As in, interesting good. Jobs thinks they can deliver emotion and interaction. iAds don't take you out of the app - they're part of it. 18:53 - Apps are where the advertising opportunities are on mobile. Apple wants to put an ad up every three minutes during the 30 minutes on average each iPhone user spends using apps every day, equally 1 billion impressions. Sounds mildly irritating. But that's not all. 18:49 - And now we're onto the seventh tentpole: iAds. Not hugely surprising. Jobs explains how things are - iPhone devs need to make money, so they run ads in games, but these ads "suck." 18:48 - Game Centre. iPhone and iPod touch blows DS and PSP out of the water, apparently. 50,000 games. The Game Centre is a social gaming network, like OpenFeint, Plus+ et al. 18.46 - Blimey - racing through them now. Number 5 is... something about data protection. We'll get to that later, because 6 is a goodie. 18:44 - Tentpole 4 - another one of Mark's suggestions - iBooks for iPhone. Jobs apparently underwhelmed himself (Engadget) as he delivers this news, but it's nice. 18:43 - Email enhancements. You can now organise by thread, have more than one exchange account, and open attachments using an app from the App Store. 18:39 - and, after mention of something called fast app switching, Jobs is back for the second tentpole of seven: folders. Hey, Mark predicted this one - it means you can have more apps on your desktop, consolidated into, yes, folders.

And we're off again for tentpole 4.

18:37 - Next, task completion (if you're doing something in one app and then change the first app - uploading pictures for example - will carry on).

Phew.

18:35 - 10 billions push notifications sent. The next innovation is local push notifications, which don't need to go through Apple's servers. 18:33 - Along similar lines, Forstall's talking about location based apps. OS 4.0 takes your privacy seriously, and a little red indicator will appear when an app wants to know where you are. That's background location. Now push notifications. 18:31 - Scott Forstall is back. This is like musical chairs. Or something. Now we're onto turn-by-turn navigation - you can listen to music while running TomTom. 18:29 - Ponsford demonstrates the benefits of this by calling his friend Aaron and asking if he wants to meet for dinner. He then opens up another app at the same time that helps him find a restaurant. I bet they don't actually go. 18:26 - Now David Ponsford from Skype is onstage, telling us how much easier it will be to use Skype with OS 4.0. You can receive calls even when the app isn't running, and, of course, switch between apps. That's the point of this bit. 18:24 - Pandora is the App showing off the technology, and onstage is Pandora's Tim Westergren, saying iPhone 4.0 has changed the future of the app. He demonstrates the browser running smoothly while Pandora plays music in the background. 18:21 - Now Scott Forstall is on stage to explain how it's done. Apple is providing seven multitasking services as APIs to developers, having distilled these services. I think that's right. 18:20 - Jobs is demonstrating it now, jumping between Safari, mail, and a game. Double-tapping the home button brings up a tray showing all the apps that are running. 18:18 - "We weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best." Probably right. Apparently the delay was due to the difficulty of running multitasking with harming battery life. Apple has cracked it, says Jobs. 18:15 - So much for our top 5. Jobs is going to show off 7 new features in OS 4.0. The first is multi-tasking. (Also mentioned - 100 new user features, 1500 APIs.) 18:13 - More boasting in numbers: 50 million iPhones sold, plus 35 million iPod touchs. Not quite DS levels, but close. 18:10 - Now he showing off apps. Scrabble, We Rule, some driving games, Etrade, IMDB, Marvel, ABC. Popular Science e-reader is 'king of the hill.' 18:08 - 3,500 iPad apps in the App Store, compared with 185,000 iPhone apps. 4 billion downloaded. 18:06 - 300,000 iPads sold the first weekend. Up to 450,000 now. 250,000 iBooks on the first day, now up to 600,000. 18:04 - iPhone 4 18:03 - Jobs. 18:01 - Everybody's seated and waiting for the show to start. People with cameras are being separated from those without 16:18 - I've just written this introductory story, and in just under two hours I'll start liveblogging.